grey hawk

December 18th, 2013

The next morning, Gonoan heads towards the Griffon’s Nest to await word of our caravan. He notices a lot of people out and the guard is requesting people stay indoors until they are ready to leave the city. The tavern is very busy due to the chaos and the games ending. After a while, a young man comes in, looks around and approaches Gonoan. He asks “Are you Mr. Nowhere?” He says he is a representative of the merchant that is expecting to travel us. They arrange a time and the young man leaves but not without a vigourous dwarf pat on the back as a thank you. As Gonoan prepares to leave, he hears people talking about the events of the previous day as a possible act of war. After he arrives at the house, we make our final preparations. Natauru is packing up and we notice that he has more things then he used to. He is concerned that we want to explore the ruins in the swamp and are not prepared to fight the dragon. We reassure him that we do not intend to confront the dragon. As we finish getting ready, Nat sets up traps around the house. We arrive at the Griffon’s Nest at the appointed time and meet the dwarven merchant, Stimtrin Cannasay. He tells us that he does not have a carriage due to them all being rented out with all of the overflow of people fleeing the city. There are 4 guards accompanying him. He wants to go to Diamond Lake first to speak with the Church of St Cuthbert and fill them in on what happened here. It takes quite a bit of time to exit the city as most of the gates are closed and people are being inspected closely. We are not harassed being with Stimtrin. There is a lot of traffic on the road leading away from the city. We notice a few commoners/farmers with battle gear heading in to the city, likely a militia group that has been called in. The weather is moderate, cloudy and warm. We travel for several days and notice that Stimtrin is kind of grumpy and taciturn. He likes to stop frequently, we suspect, because he is not used to riding. We arrive at Diamond Lake after 3 days on Godsday in the month of Harvester. We stay at the Able Carter Coaching Inn. After freshening up, we head towards the Emporium to seek Adriana. It turns out to be a large building that encompasses multiple vices for hire. We approach the front desk and are directed upstairs to the Veiled Corridor. We pay the entry fee and proceed, though Gonoan stays downstairs. An important looking woman approaches and assumes we may be new clients. We let her know we want to see Adriana, that she wanted us to visit her if we made it to town. She seems a little thrown but asks us to wait. As we make ourselves comfortable, we notice a man with a white lion head with a gorgeous woman on either side of him. He appears to be regaling them with fascinating stories. He approaches us and introduces himself as Shag Solomon. He buys us a drink and notes that we are new in town. He seems to think that we are not what Adriana would choose. He asks our names and offers to find out if Adriana has time for us. He returns a few moments later with an exotic looking woman on his arm. She comments about the smokiness and looks at us closely. She says to Sanna “Hey, how are you honey, you didn’t respond to my messages. Someone did but I’m not sure who” Sanna embraces her. She claims to know us but can’t really remember our names. She sits with us and tells Sanna that she likes how she looks on this world and touches her hair. She asks how our adventure went and Beltin asks which one? “Didn’t you go fight Tiamat?” “Not lately”. “Did you give up? Did they make you forget everything? I’ll be right back” and she walks away. When she returns, she says she needs to talk to her cousin to figure out what she is forgetting. She asks if we are going to be around but we tell her we leave in the morning. She says she will be back in a little while. Obregon asks Shag’s advice on who to have take care of him and is told he should try elsewhere as this establishment is probably too much for him. Sanna pulls out money and asks to be treated well. Shag leads her back to a room with a couple of women to give her a makeover. They have her armor cleaned and begin putting things together for her. Meanwhile, Gonoan see some Courtesans passing by. 3 ladies come by and look us over. Obregon asks which one is going to take him off and bathe him. They pretend to fight over it but he requests a red head. One of them goes to find one. A red head approaches and takes Obregon away. Beltin, Pike and Gonoan return to the inn. As they pass the feral dog, there is a white orc on the porch who growls at Gonoan who promptly spits at its feet. It snarls “That almost hit me” but Gonoan just walks away. Sanna gets her makeover (hair, makeup, new clothes) and Obregon enjoys his dalliance. After some time, Adriana returns and seems disappointed by Sanna’s new look. She invites Sanna to accompany her somewhere to talk to Bronwin. Obregon and Sanna exchange a look of dismay as they recognize the name of the witch from Dyver’s. Obregon runs back to the inn and gathers the rest of the group to join in. We return to the Emporium and meet up with Sanna. Shag wants to know if something is amiss with Sanna who demurs. Adriana leads us to the old observatory and we talk with her as we walk along. We learn that she met us at the World Serpent Inn when we were waiting for a portal. We had been equipped to fight a chine which is like a golem and we apparently did well. The observatory appears ahead of us on a bluff. It is crumbling and uninhabited looking. There are lights flickering in the windows of the third floor. She warns us to wait and she will be right back. Nat advises us to wait as well as he has had a vision. He warns that the Eater of days is here. He doesn’t know what that means though. Sanna scans with detect magic and picks up nothing. We move closer to the building until the detect magic can scan the walls but still we get nothing. We notice lights coming on in the second floor now. Adriana sticks her head out a window and says she will be right back. She returns and tells us that Bronwin doesn’t like anyone to step on the grass but to follow her around. We do and Bronwin recognizes us. She asks if we are still angry as she does not want to fight. We tell her, sarcastically, that we are not mad at all! She wants to bring us up magically one at a time but we decline. She warns that we will think poorly of her if we come through the front door. We assure her that we have already judged her. She sends us to the front. We go up the stairs and through the huge double wooden doors with a maniacal face on them. Nat thinks it has something to do with the moon. The first room is filled with detritus with overturned tables forming a crude barricade on one side. There are a few skeletons in this room with crossbows taking cover behind the tables. Bronwin tells us to wait for her to come get us as it would be safer. She greets us and says it is nice to see us. Sanna says it is surprising to see her as the last time we saw her she had an arrow in her head. She says her boyfriend healed her and us, and that we should be grateful he did. He turns out to be the wizard who was holding us in the ruins. We pass some open rooms, one of which has a human woman who closes her door and another with a warrior who asks if there is going to be trouble. Bronwin tells him it will be okay. She leads us to another room that stinks of decay. There is a large table whose chairs are filled with humanoid figures that are obviously dead. Fresh food is in front of the bodies. Bronwin says to pay no attention as she did not do it, it is a leftover from the previous necromancer who resided here. Sanna detects necromancy and illusion. We move on up some stairs to the second floor which is an enormous bedchamber. A small bandage wrapped and bespectacled humanoid with fine clothes holds a silver platter with a human womans severed head. There is an angel statue with Filge on the base in one corner. She leads us up again to the upper floor which was obviously where a large telescope would have once been. Bronwin begins explaining but Sanna stops her and asks if Gonoan can punch her. She declines and offers to tell us everything that she is allowed to. She claims to not have wanted to kill us, she just wanted to get away. She didn’t mean for the puppets to steal things. Adriana is confused as we do not seem to be the people she met in the world serpent inn. Bronwins boyfriend decided to use our bodies to rent to others. He allowed us to escape so we could become more powerful and would be able to host stronger entities. She wants to know if we will allow them to continue using our bodies when we gain more experience. Unanimously, we decline. She tells us that with the magical grass outside, she ate our memories. Sanna supports her pursuit of knowledge and magic but wanted to be asked. She used us to help the dead settle their incomplete tasks. Her boyfriend had been watching us since we were on our way to Dyver’s. He picked us out back then. We interrupted his plans in the ruins because he was not ready for things to go the way they did. Adriana admits to contacting us and that is how we ended up here. She thought we were the people she knew at the world serpent inn. She is a barbarian but too weak to fight Bronwin and their parents wouldn’t want them to fight anyway. She is angry though. Bronwin says her boyfriend is very powerful and once changed a wizard in to a dinosaur that was consequently put in the games and killed. She says she believes the events in Greyhawk have something to do with what she is doing here. It may be part of a larger conspiracy of evil. She is worried about what happens here while her boyfriend is looking after the other planes. She offers 3 options: Fight the chines, help deal with tiamat or the greyhawk ruins. We have not been going to the ruins and they don’t want to push us there but we would develop the skills we need there. The swamp ruins could also be of help but the dragon is very powerful and will likely kill us. The rumor is that there is a ring with a wish on it in those ruins. That is what the dragon is looking for. Her boyfriend is allowing us to live so he can harvest us when we are powerful enough. Bronwin doesn’t need us to do anything for her. She wants us to make ourselves more powerful so we can help down the road. Tiamat has dominated other worlds and there is one called the dungeon master who is also fighting her and fighting the boyfriend. It is all about control but the claim is that the boyfriend is a lesser evil. There are 2 dragons in the swamp but we should fight the female before the male. There is a trap around the females lair. The female is Illthain and she hates Allistan of Diamond Lake. She offers to give us some things to help defeat the dragon but we want to head back to the Inn. She says she will come by early in the morning. Will she show up and will we accept her help?